Nothing is ever easy

Despite the best laid plans, sometimes things just go awry. Over on s/v Letitgo we have a recent example...

As we all know by now; on a boat things are never simple, one problem leads to another one and sometimes one can’t help an unscheduled trip up the mast…. And this is what happened yesterday when we installed our spinnaker halyard. It all started innocently with a reeve eye and a messenger line :

All went well my bowline held (thank you very much) and in no time I had everything in place, proud smile on my face! Then again, the messenger line was routed on the inside of the spreader so we had to come up with plan B. So a genius idea of mine: get a weight on the shackle and guide it with a line over the obstacle, well you can see how this is going to end at this point I am sure, it got all tangled up into the anti bird wire on the top of the spreader. As I am sure you can understand I needed a rescue for the messenger line, and *V* was to inaugurate the new bosun chair. But this time we had the camera up so we were able to take a few nice shots! As you can tell on the picture below I am scratching my head trying to figure how I am going to sweet talk my way out of that one! Though *V* loves being up there for some odd reasons….

Now you understand why a 15 minute job takes 1 hour, we call it boat time…. But now we look more like a real boat with the ability to raise a spinnaker, have a second line to go up and a spare shroud just in case.